Here’s hoping for some NBA referee fun this evening

June 17th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanR

Henry Abbot over at TrueHoop brings up an interesting point heading into Game 6 this evening — can the Lakers steal one? Me hopes so. — the refs involved in tonight’s game are anything if not marred in a wee bit of controversy.

The referees for Game 6 will be Eddie F. Rush, Bennett Salvatore, and Joey Crawford.

Those last two would make anybody’s short list of referees who have been involved in controversy.

Crawford is very highly regarded. But just a year ago, Crawford was suspended indefinitely, reportedly for challenging Tim Duncan to a fight in the middle of a game. A condition of Crawford’s reinstatement, according to Commissioner David Stern, was ongoing counseling.

Salvatore has also raised the ire of all kinds of NBA fans, and he explained his side of many controversial calls in a series of posts on TrueHoop.

ESPN’s Bill Simmons once named Salvatore the second worst referee in the NBA, and a review of every call of Game 5 of the 2006 NBA Finals by 82games.com found that of the ten debatable calls Salvatore made in that game, eight favored the Heat — who ultimately won that game and the championship.

Lately, the NBA’s referees have come under all kinds of fire (a former referee saying key games are fixed at the behest of the League, for instance), and you could certainly make the case that it would be a good time to diffuse the situation by assigning the least controversial referees out there.

Holy blockquote, blogman!  Now, this certainly doesn’t mean much … a referee isn’t a referee if their calls weren’t questioned from time to time. (Sort of like a sailor isn’t a sailor if his back and fill usage isn’t scrutinized here and there. And yes, I just looked up a random sailing term.)

But, in an NBA Finals that has been pretty meh, here’s to some referee controversy tonight. Step aside, Tim Donaghey!